


2580

by Heronfem



Series: The Fire and the Fury [4]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-11-29 19:38:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11447682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heronfem/pseuds/Heronfem
Summary: In the ruins of time, an opportunity emerges.Prequel to Titan.





	2580

The air is cold but the sheets are warm. 

He rises slowly, all the old aches and pains of a hard lived life coming back to scratch claws down his joints and scars. The worst mornings are those when the ones on his back hurt- those, and his spine, make for agony until he can fumble the pills from where they fell by the mattress and swallow them down. They're in safehouse four, the nicest of the lot. He huffs as he stretches out, glancing out the windows to see nice trees on a well maintained street. It's not quite early, but not quite late- the perfect time of morning, when the world is just starting to stretch. Noise seems muffled, almost, muted. He looks out the window and tries not to think too hard about the pain in his joints. He's not old enough for that sort of misery, is he?

Mick snaps his fingers, and he turns. The look he's given is expectant, and he sighs, falling back down into bed and letting himself be pulled close, pushes his head under Mick's chin. He runs hot, of course, and Len's aching joints ache a little less when they're being held.

Somewhere in the safe house a faucet drips, splashing fat drops onto the porcelain of the sink. 

“Morning.”

Mick's voice is rough from sleep, more rasp than usual.

“So it is.”

Silence, wrapping around them like silk. He closes his eyes again, flinching away when Mick's hand lands on one of the thickest scars, a long rope of muscle stretching from shoulder to hip. Mick's arm wraps, drapes over his waist, rests there casually. It is the only contact he allows, even on the best of days, save for Lisa.

“Getting up soon?”

He snorts, tentatively drapes his own arm over Mick. “Maybe. Make it worth my while.”

A huff of laughter, a slight adjustment so that his head's tucked closer. The faint thump of a heartbeat is soothing. It reminds him of the times that he would hold Lisa, cradling her as she sobbed while he patched her up, holding her wrist to count out the thump-thump, thump-thump of her heart to be sure she was alive. He's done the same for Mick a number of times, whispering sweet nothings while Mick is horribly still, pale as a sheet. Some days the ring draped on its chain around his neck feels like a noose, others a collar, but most days it feels like safety. The metal holds skin-heat, while the air steals it back away. Something very familiar about that.

“It's too early to be thinking.”

He smiles, turning his face to kiss the skin of Mick's throat. “Didn't ask you.”

Mick snorts, reaching up to scratch over his scalp, and cups the back of his neck as he leans up, pressing a slow kiss to Mick's lips.

Mick smiles against his mouth, slow and languid for once. Give it time.

“Do you remember,” he murmurs in between slow kisses, “when we used to think that we were the most dangerous things in the world?”

Mick chuckles, hands running down to hold his hips in huge hands. “I remember.”

“Fucking idiots, both of us,” Len purrs, and kisses him again, harder. “I miss you. I miss you, I miss you, I _miss you_...”

The world dissolves into nothing but empty light as the dream world fades, and he sits in the empty light of nothing. History passes around him whirs of nothing and everything- every potential history, every possible future, and he sits in the middle of it all. He is so helplessly, hopelessly alone, at the end of all things. Time stretches out all around him, a universe he's unable to touch. What he would like, what he would give, it is all pointless. He misses his home, his love. The ring he slipped into Mick's pocket is the last physical thing his heart is tethered to, nothing else. Leonard Snart, compressed, is that ring.

_a gift_

He jerks to awareness, jolting to his feet. The white is disappearing, evolving, becoming darkness and light and stars and death all at once. A great white shape, empty void with only the vaguest shape of arms and a head lurches before him, soaring up and expanding. Slits of black become vivid green eyes, staring down at him.

_a gift_

“What the fuck,” he breathes. The incarnation of time leans down, the life and death of stars running through its amorphous shape. He cannot move, can barely breathe- not that he needs to, he is dead and useless and alone with nothing but this great and beautiful nightmare stretching out in front of him. He has never seen anything more beautiful and more horrible, every glory and every act of destruction humanity has ever created painting itself against the things form before vanishing forever.

_Home_

_home is where you want to be_

_home again_

“Fuck home,” he snaps. 258 South Rulon Street lingers in his mind, the sheets tangled around his hips and Mick's scars brands against his skin. Home was never there, and he pushes it away hard. “Central City doesn't mean shit without him in it.”

_Home_

_is not a place_

Hope, it is said, is the cruelest of all torture. “You're lying.”

Time stretches out massive wings, wraps him up in the pure heat death of the universe, and pulls him close. He looks into the heart of Time, the green eyes burning with life. Time can give, and take away. Create, and destroy. Bring him back, or shred him from existence.

_No._

He _burns_ , the very heat of life itself rushing through veins that don't really exist anymore. Time flows through him, and he stares out into the universe. It's over as fast as it begins, and he trembles in the hands of Time. In the distance, he can see Mick staring at the stars from an alien ship, from the Waverider, from behind a burning house, from a Revolutionary battlefield. His form warps and twists between Mick and the thick armor of Kronos, and always the chain around his neck burns bright, a ring calling him back.

“Take me home,” he breathes.

Time smiles.

_Soon._

**Author's Note:**

> Not Dead Yet could also be the title of this series.


End file.
